More than 75% of people in the Southeast Asia and Oceania region will have access to LTE networks by 2021, according to the latest edition of the Southeast Asia and Oceania regional Ericsson Mobility Report.
Between 2015 and 2021, mobile subscriptions are also forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4%, reaching around 1.3 billion subscriptions by the end of the period.
With the continued rise of smartphones and an accelerated growth in data usage, the total mobile traffic in the region is also seen to increase 14-fold by 2021. Mobile broadband traffic is also growing and more consumers are migrating to higher data volume packages.
In 2015, 40% of consumers in the region are subscribing to 2.1-5 GB mobile broadband plans, compared to 30% in 2014. For all countries included in the analysis, the number of subscribers with packages below 1 GB has declined within the same period, while the number of subscribers with higher data volume packages has increased significantly.
“Our report shows that with this high subscription penetration, in the coming years, rural areas will become more important. To real the full potential for the local market, service providers, and device manufacturers will need to address existing challenges around availability, affordability and on increasing consumers’ levels of awareness on the benefits of smartphones and mobile data,” said Sean Gowran, head of Ericsson Philippines and the Pacific Islands.
As expected, the countries in the region with the best network performance are Australia and Singapore due to their leadership in deploying LTE and LTE-Advanced.
Ericsson’s analysis shows that data-intensive applications such as HD video streaming could easily be delivered by mobile networks in Singapore and Australia across the whole coverage area. LTE carrier aggregation in Australia has enabled possible peak download speeds of up to 600 Mbps.
Gowan said similar applications could be a challenge for operators to deliver in developing countries, although Ericsson expects developing countries’ networks to greatly improve in performance over the coming years.
“With the next wave of new smartphone users expected to come from rural and remote areas, the challenge will be how to deliver a similar mobile broadband experience to these populations in a cost-effective way,” the report noted.